On the foot-tails of Jenny's post on why she hates the wedding industry yesterday, we had yet another adventure into the wedding world today. See, my lovely friend Melissa is getting married, and I am honored to be standing up as her bridesmaid at her wedding. Melissa chose Amsale dresses for the ladies, so today, Weston, Jenny and I took a ride to the Wedding Salon of Manhasset (almost an hour drive for me!) to try some dresses and see which one looked best on me. Let's back up here: last week, after checking the Amsale website, I called the bridesmaid division of the Wedding Salon of Manhasset and made an appointment to come try dresses. Bridesmaid department, as per the Amsale website, clearly is at 1468 Northern Boulevard, right? So, we show up there, take the baby out of the car, into the stroller, up in the elevator, and we end up in this gorgeous bridal salon.
Now, here is the funny part: they do not know why we are there. For all we know, we could be a bride coming to look for a wedding gown! Yes, I have a ring on it, but Ms. Jenny doesn't. Also, we were dressed nicely, we showed up on time. And yet, no one came to help us. Finally a woman came over, I told her why I was there and she's all: you're in the wrong spot. I explained, nicely, that their website said this was the location of the bridesmaid dresses, and she went into some fable about how they are moving stores, and eventually all of the dresses will be at once place...and I explained again how their website clearly was wrong. So, she wrote down on a piece of paper the new address: 1681 Northern Boulevard.
So, we do the whole routine in rewind, Weston is being a total trooper, and we end up at this shopping center. It says 1681, however, there's a Pure Barre store there, no sign of anything bridal...we loop around. I get out with the stroller and babe, Jenny parks, and she goes into Pure Barre to see what is up! The very nice girl in there says how they get that question of, "um, bridal salon?" all the time...because uh, the other bridal salon keeps telling people to go to 1681, when it is clearly, clearly not a bridal salon? Yeah, that's it. She tells us to go up the stairs to find the bridal salon. Mind you, the bridal salon, which ended up being upstairs, isn't even OVER 1681. Where they got that address from is totally beyond me.
We couldn't obviously go all the way up with the stroller, so we wheel all the way around, go up two big steps and into...what looked like someone's walk in closet. The woman at the desk looked
As the lady put the clips on me, she started barking angrily at everyone in the room, which mind you, included an extremely well behaved 7.5 month old (and us, that was all...). "Who sent you here!?" she angrily exclaimed. "Was it Bella Bridal?! They have been sending brides here all week!" I explained, calmly, that "my bride" wasn't from here, and I was just instructed to try on a dress. I had no clue (I really don't!) where she is getting her dress from. She kept going about wanting to know who "sent us," and finished with a very loud, "I will find out! I will! I will call Amsale myself!" Um, ok? I changed out of my dress and we got out of there as fast as possible.
So, why am I telling you all of this? For one thing, when I have a bad experience someplace, I want to warn people! I cannot for the life of me understand how in this day and age, when anyone can go Yelp, Blog, Tweet, etc. their experience why a customer service person, in the bridal industry, nonetheless, would be so rude. We were not rude once. Not once! We came in friendly, grateful, and ready to go. It isn't our fault that Bella Bridal was sending people there, so guess what, don't take it out on us! Because you know what? Jenny knows a lot of brides, as do I, and we sure as anything won't be sending our brides to the Wedding Salon of Manhasset. Their behavior was uncalled for, and left a really bad taste in our mouth. And lastly, don't you dare act any which way you please to me and my sister, and then try to be all friendly to the baby--it's not appreciated. Wedding Salon of Manhasset, get off your high horse: you are a wedding salon on Long Island. It's a big, big world. Readjust your attitude, because I can tell you: a smile goes a long, long way. I am sure that there are nice people who work there, but unfortunately we didn't encounter any of them today, and we didn't receive any apology or understanding that their addresses on the Amsale website are not correct. In an industry based on one special happy day, the wedding industry sure knows how to make every day leading up to it pretty miserable, eh?
What's your bad experience in the wedding industry complex? Do share!
I HATE HATE HATE THIS PLACE! I got my Amsale bridesmaids dress there last year for Eric and Daph's wedding and they were AWFUL! The two girls working the first day we went in were nice and knowledgeable but when I went back for measurements and to actually order the dress, they were nasty, made comments that since I'm a bigger girl the dress would have to cost up to $100 MORE than what was on the price tag and that we waited too long to order the dresses and I would have to pay even more for expedited shipping. They told me an arrival date of early May and when the date came and I called to see if my dress was there, they were rude and told me they would alert the bride (who lives in New Hampshire) that the dresses were in. I was the only one of the bridal party ordering from them, I was the only one in New York who needed to get from them, and I was the only one who needed to know that my dress was ready. I called back every day (at this point there was less than a month to the wedding) and finally the owner got on the phone and told me they had my dress, but then told me the color was 'melon' when in fact I had ordered 'cobalt'. Thankfully she was reading the wrong order form, but it was still nerve wracking. I called my SIL and told her that I might stand out a little at the wedding because they had maybe ordered my dress in the wrong color. I finally went to pick it up and it took them 20 minutes to find the dress, the shop is not very large and their store room is even smaller. I called my mom on the way home, with dress in hand (thankfully), swearing up and down that no matter what, I would never go back to that place in my life and I would warn everyone looking for bridesmaid dresses against it. I only wish I could have warned you before you had to go and experience their terrible customer service.
ReplyDeleteAlso, they have been saying they were moving locations since I was there in February 2013. Also, when Daph called to set up an appointment, they were extremely rude to her and told her that she would never have her dresses in time because she waited so long - she called in December to make the appointment, the wedding was June 1st, and the first time we (Daph, her sister, and myself) could all go was in February. There was plenty of time.